Openworld Update: XML/BI Publisher & R12, 11g PL/SQL, ADFdi and more

A few updates on BI Publisher and a couple of interesting notes through the OpenWorld sessions that I attended over the last day or so.

BI Publisher:

• eBusiness Suite Release 12.1 - All standard reports to have Templates (Data still generated in Reports)
• Excel Templates for FSGs from EBS Release 12.0 (currently controlled release)
• DataTemplate Builder coming... still.
• ... did I miss anything? I was hoping for a little more, but beggars can't be choosers, even in San Francisco ;-)

Other Interesting Stuff:

Attended a couple of top sessions today, first was Steven Feuerstein's 11g PL/SQL session on making the most of the Function Result Cache - an important feature in my mind similar in nature to prior PL/SQL performance enhancing features like bulk binding that developers neglect somewhat. Although with its conflict with authid current_user and my focus on the EBS I'm going to have to do some digging to see if its usable with the EBS (apparently not at first glance).

Second was Juan Ruiz's MS Office Front Ends for ADF, where he demo'd upcoming (Q1 2009?) Desktop Integration components for ADF - very sexy stuff, ADF components built into Microsoft Excel 2007 with http/https communication through to backend ADF based model. In the world I live in the solution will definitely gain some traction. A bit of a shame its not here today although there are people/products achieving the same via varying means - a few of them in the audience including a couple of Kiwis (a.k.a. New Zealanders) - nice to see.

The Fusion Applications scene is very hush hush, some rumours around but unfortunately nothing of public attention - Oracle people keeping everything under wraps.

PS. Trying to keep these posts short and to the point given the heap of posts on OpenWorld around.